


Per aspera ad Astera (through hardships to the stars)

by SteveTrevorsStarship



Series: I dreamed the snow was you, when there was snow [3]
Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst, More Fluff, less angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 03:56:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18241874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SteveTrevorsStarship/pseuds/SteveTrevorsStarship
Summary: They figure it out.(Alternatively, they spend time together and apart.)





	Per aspera ad Astera (through hardships to the stars)

**Author's Note:**

> i gotta stress at this point it's definitely not standalone and you need to read the other fics in the series

Diana wakes the next morning to the smell of bacon and the sound of sizzling eggs on the stove. And, not moments later, she hears a knock on her bedroom door and a soft, almost imperceptible, “Diana, you awake?”

She stares at the door a moment, wondering if she should respond. It’s not that she doesn’t want to talk to him, it’s more that she is not sure if she wants to figure out the difference between two separate Steves, where one ends and the other begins. She knows she can’t ask him for answers (he seems to have even less of those than she does) and she would love to implore the gods, but they’re either dead or unwilling to talk. Diana isn’t sure which.

In the end, she gets up and opens the door. She smiles at Steve and wonders if it comes off as weary and heartbroken as she feels.

And then he smiles back and it’s like everything is made right again because it’s small, yet blinding, and she feels as though she’s Icarus, too close to the sun for her wings made of wax and belief to handle. His smile feels like the pools on Themyscira and she would go as far as to say she doesn’t feel half as exhausted as before.

“Hey,” he says. “Look, I’m sorry I just randomly showed up in your house and so I hope this isn’t an intrusion of privacy or anything but- you eat bacon, right?”

\---

Breakfast is silent and while it isn’t awkward, it is most certainly tense. When they finish, they move about the kitchen, keeping a mental and physical distance from each other, only interrupted when Steve asks her where some of the plates go.

Until finally he is leaning against the counter and watching Diana as she puts the last dish away. She feels his gaze piercing her back and turns toward him, observing him just as thoroughly.

There’s a long, silent moment before he speaks.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I’m still sorry."

She has no response for that. She only inquires, “What is it like?”

Assuming she means having two different people inside of his head, he responds, “It’s not-- It’s weird because it’s two people in one head except they’re the same exact person, only one has a shitton of more 2000’s pop culture references than the other and they’ve both got different stories, different childhoods.” He pauses, wondering if that was a justifiable description for the situation. “What’s it like for you?”

She smiles and he thinks it looks sad, almost bitter. “Like having a band-aid ripped off a fresh wound.”

“Diana, if you don’t want me to--”

“No,” she interrupts, having none of it. “I will adjust.”

Steve sweeps his gaze over her, taking in every inch of her graceful beauty and he barely takes notice of the fact that she looks at him like she’s drowning and he is oxygen.

“Do you still love me?” he asks, suddenly breathless and voicing the question that’s been aching at the back of his mind for far, far too long.

She doesn’t hesitate when she says, “Yes.”

He pauses, unsure of how to respond. “It’s been 34 years, Angel,” he finally says, softly, as though his voice could break this intimate moment of asking questions that he’s not sure he wants the answer to.

“It was 66 years the first time around. Besides, do you still love me?”

“How could I not?”

She nods as if that answers her question. But Steve can’t stop himself from thinking, _You’re a freaking goddess, how in the hell are you in love with some schmuck that came back from the dead?_

And he knows for a fact that _that’s_ both Steves talking.

\---

They spend a day together, roaming Paris while Steve tells her trivial stories from his childhood (both of them.) She responds in kind, telling the stories about Etta, Sameer, Charlie, and Chief, or at least, the ones that he doesn’t already remember from ‘84. Sometimes he forgets details (“I- my sister, what was her name?”) and if Diana knows them, she’s more than happy to fill in the blanks.

When she asks how he forgets the small things, he tells her, “It’s less that I forgot them and more that I lost them in the mass-upload of information my brain received when I met you.”

She finally gets some questions answered.

“What were you doing at Andrews?”

“Uh, so, funny story. I was there for my sister’s wedding-- you met her, actually. Anyways, her husband is an Air Force lawyer and. Well. He doesn’t like me much. The feelings mutual, of course, but _then_ I decided to crash his bachelor party with a-- you know what? You get the gist. I pissed her off and when I was talking to Col. Williams about, er, something, she decided to take out her wrath on me. That’s why Williams was late, by the way. Sorry about that.”

Diana furrows her brows. “Doesn’t the Air Force have better things to do with their time than meddle in sibling rivalries?”

“You confuse us with the Army, who are incapable of double tasking.” She responds with a swift slap on the back of the head and he admits begrudgingly, “It was my sister’s lunch break.”

To her credit, she doesn’t ask until the end of the day, when his smile is softer and his eyes are brighter. She’s sure she doesn’t look any less happy (he’s _Steve,_ she doesn’t care about the situation, she loves him.)

“When are you going back?”

(It’s not _if,_ it’s when. He has a job, and it’s not that he wants to, it’s that he _has_ to.)

“Early tomorrow morning,” he says, scratching the back of his head. Diana frowns softly.

_“We’ll figure it out.”_

_“I wish we had more time.”_

\---

“You have an early flight tomorrow,” Diana says halfheartedly as Steve brushes his lips against her jaw, slowly, teasingly.

She feels him smirk against her skin and knows he’s going to say something along the lines of _what, do you want me to stop?_ But then he pauses for a moment and kisses her lips. When they separate, his breath is hot against her skin.

“I don’t care,” he says, the carefree grin spreading on his face and _by the gods, he tastes the same._

\---

She’s standing outside the airport, next to the car and he’s standing next to her, his eyes following the contours of her face like he’s never going to see her again. Even when he knows he will.

They look at each other for a long moment before he pulls her into a hug. He turns his head slightly to whisper into her ear, “I love you.”

Diana thinks for a moment. And then she smiles. “I know.”

He breaks apart from her suddenly. “Did you just Han and Leia me?” She reaches out to smooth the crease in his brows, her grin wide. “ _That’s_ what you’ve been doing the past hundred years? Watching _Star Wars?_ ”

“You should go before you get stuck in security and are late for your plane,” Diana chides teasingly. He takes the opportunity to turn her mock-pout into a short kiss before picking up his bag and heading to the doors, looking back at her to grin one last time.

“Hey, what about Star Trek?”

“Steven Howard Trevor, _I swear to the gods--”_

“I’m just saying, Kirk is kinda awesome!”

“I love you, too!” she finally yells back.

And with that, he’s inside the airport. Diana would follow him but there are rules that come with that now, an attack on America separating the world from their “Ross and Rachel” type reunions. She can see him navigating his way through the weary travelers and armed security of Charles DeGaulle before he disappears from sight completely and wonders if the sandy blonde hair and striking blue eyes will ever leave her mind completely.

She tries not to think of a time when she couldn’t remember his voice, a time when even his features slipped from her mind. It was always that lingering scent of his that stuck with her, though, the distinct mint and charred cherry pine that stayed on every piece of furniture of his- their’s- for a year or two before it finally faded.

\---

“Who’s your new girlfriend, Steve?” Jackie asks at the family dinner Steve is hosting in New Jersey. His sister looks smug, leaning over the Shepard’s Pie and grabbing for his phone. He expertly slides it off the table and into his lap while her husband looks over, intrigued.

“New girlfriend?” he says. _New material to torture Steve with?_ Steve hears.

He resists the urge to spit out his drink and responds smoothly, “An Amazonian Princess that doubles as a goddess.”

Jackie rolls her eyes. “Dad, help me find out who his new girlfriend is.”

His father looks at Steve with resigned eyes. “Just do it before she starts showing Jake the baby pictures.”

“And I have stories, too,” Jackie chimes in.

“I’ve mentioned that I hate having an older sister, right?”

“Yup. Every day of your life since you turned 13.”

Steve groans. “Fine. Her name’s Diana and she’s a Greco-Roman curator at the Louvre. You done?”

Silence for a moment. “Did you just say the _Louvre_?” Jackie asks incredulously. Steve tips his head back as though asking the stars (er, the ceiling) for help.

“Yes.”

“She’s from _France_?” Jake says.

“Well, she grew up in Greece, actually, but she lives in France now, yeah.”

His father, ever stoic, laughs. “This is a joke, right?”

Steve glares at him. “If you guys don’t start stuffing your food into your mouths instead of your feet, I may just bury your graves for you.”

Another long, silent moment.

“Hey, what does she look like?” Jake asks curiously. Steve sighs and pulls out his phone, finding a selfie of Diana and him at breakfast the day he left Paris. Steve had taken both of their plates of food (it is not his fault French breakfasts were so damned small) and Diana had taken the opportunity to scoot closer to him, wrapping her arm around his shoulders. She grabbed his phone on the way and raised it to take a picture of them, but he had gotten surprised and it had resulted in an unflattering photo of him, his nose scrunched up and egg dripping down his scruff while she smiled at him brilliantly.

He had kept the photo and originally meant to crop himself out, but they were too close to do so.

“Holy shit, she’s _gorgeous_ ,” Jackie breathes. Steve turns off his phone and puts it back in his lap, reaching to actually eat dinner instead of talking about his girlfriend.

“Are you sure that’s not a photoshopped Stock photo?” Jake asks. Steve’s eyebrow shoots upward.

\---

“Ms. Prince, I am very sorry to interrupt, but you are getting an onslaught of text messages,” Alfred says.

Diana frowns, “Don’t be sorry, we’re not doing much, Alfred. And please, it’s Diana.” Barry and Vic don’t bother to look up from their video game, nor Bruce from his work concerning Luthor. Clark, Lois, and Arthur look up from their beers with half-hearted interest.

Alfred hands Diana her phone and she goes into her text messages, searching for the culprit. When she sees it’s Steve, she tries to keep the grin off her face.

**_Angel, please help. Family dinner. SOS. Send a prayer or two or five or a hundred._ **

**_Theyre asking about you, this is the most terrifying moment of my life_ **

**_I think Jackie is interrogating me? Which she’s terrible at it how did she get the job she has_ **

**_Please make it stop now Jake has more info to torture me with_ **

**_Apparently I’m incapable of a) having a girlfriend b) having a hot girlfriend c) keeping a girlfriend, hot or not, for more than a month_ **

**_Remember this moment when you meet them_ **

**_Jackie brought out the baby pictures. I’m not sure how to defend myself from Jake at this point_ **

**_Ok so after looking at the childhood pictures I have decided it is now a plausible theory that I can’t keep a girlfriend for over a month. Possibly because I have never had a girlfriend for over a month_ **

**_If you don’t send someone quick I might murder Jackie_ **

**_“Within the span of 5 seconds” quick_ **

The messages cut off after that and Diana can only assume that Steve left to inflict harm upon his older sister and can almost imagine the two of them rolling around in the grass and wrestling each other.

“Diana, what are you grinning about?” Clark asks, his own grin showing as he sits with his arm wrapped around Lois.

“A friend of mine went to dinner with family,” she answers smoothly. “He’s panicked.”

Barry, on the couch, sits up and looks at Diana. “Did you just say a friend of yours? That’s male? And texting you during a family dinner?”

She quirks an eyebrow. “Yes?”

“Diana has a _boyfriend_?” Clark says.

“Where did you get 'boyfriend' out of that?”

“He’s a guy that’s panicking during a family dinner. He’s panicking about a girl, obviously. If he’s texting you, that girl is you,” Bruce says gruffly, barely looking up from his files.

Diana frowns, “That cannot be right every time.”

Barry is out of his seat in-- well, in a flash, and grabs her unlocked phone, reading through the text messages quickly before handing it back to her. She waves the scent of ozone out of her nose.

“He started with ‘Angel’ and mentioned her meeting his family. This ‘Steve’ guy is definitely a boyfriend. That reasoning is definitely right every time.”

Silence falls over the room as Bruce looks up at Diana. She winces.

“Steve? As in _Trevor_?” Bruce asks.

“Bruce, why would you even say that? He’s dead, man, that’s kind of--” Barry says, only to be interrupted by Vic.

“He’s not dead. Remember that guy from our first meeting with Williams? And the same guy in Afghan?”

“...Oh. Wait, so you’re dating your dead boyfriend? Does he _know_ that he’s your dead boyfriend?”

“That’s a wonderful question,” Bruce deadpans.

“Yes, he knows.” Diana glares at Bruce, who stares right on back.

“He’s also a suspected A.R.G.U.S agent--”

“And has yet to ask me any questions pertaining to the League,” she counters.

Bruce clamps his mouth shut. The rest of the League watch the two, fascinated by the ongoing argument between their de facto leaders. Clark is the one to finally interrupt their staredown, finally saying, “What is he like?”

None of them miss the smile that flits across her face, one that she probably couldn’t hold back if she tried. They’ve certainly never seen it before and are usually the receivers of gentler smiles.

“He makes me happy.”

She could talk about what he’s like for days. His eyes are bluer than the sky he crashed out of and deeper than the sea he crashed into, his smile brighter than the sun that shone on that day, heart bigger than the blood on his hands. He’s beautiful, he’s alive, he’s hers.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading and feel free to follow my tumblrss
> 
> https://www.tumblr.com/blog/stevetrevorstardis
> 
> https://netflixandfangirlattacks.tumblr.com/
> 
> either one man i dont care.


End file.
